A Haunting Tale
by Vengence-Angel2010
Summary: NOW ADOPTED! See authors Shadow Kross and sasori's-sexy-assistant.
1. Chapter 1

**I know that I have other works that people would like to read more of at the moment, and I will get around to updating them all at some point or another. I just needed this story to get all of my sillyness out first. Please don't expect this story to be serious, make sense in line with Naruto Cannon, the laws of physics, or really do anything constructive at all. Thank you.**

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Naruto stomped his way to the clearing located a little ways away from the bridge builder's house. 'Stupid Sasuke-teme, and Sakura-chan fawning all over him. Why can't she pay some attention to me?' He thought angrily.

Team seven had defeated Gatou and saved the entire Land of Waves just the day before, and yet it seemed like nothing had changed; Sasuke brooding, Sakura fan-girling, Kakashi pervert-ing, and Naruto being ignored. So he decided to go talk to Haku's grave. At lease Haku had talked and listened to him, even if it was just a means to get information.

Naruto continued into the clearing, muttering under his breath about evil Uchiha's and how they have everything. Hearing a disgruntled voice that wasn't his own, Naruto looked up.

"Wha?" Was his eloquent statement. There standing by his grave was a ghostly apparition of Momochi Zabuza, seemingly trying and failing to grasp the hilt of his sword.

"Don't just stand there brat, get my sword out of the ground. She's gonna rust like that!" The supernatural nuke-nin exclaimed. Naruto stood frozen, looking gobsmacked.

"You're dead!" He shrieked, pointing accusingly.

"No shit, brat. Haku wanted me to help you, and you oh-so-kindly reminded me of my humanity before I died, so I stupidly agreed. Now pull Kubikiri Honchou out of the ground this instant!" The apparition ranted.

"But it's marking your grave." Naruto explained a bit sadly.

"I don't want to know where my old body is rotting the ground; I'm stuck following you rather than staying here, and I don't want some low-life to find my sword and sell her. Or worse yet, try to wield her and make themselves look like an idiot." Spectral Zabuza complained. "Kubikiri is a legendary blade, made for one of the legendary Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. You can't leave her here to rot."

"I'm not a Legendary Swordsman though." The small blonde looked downcast, still not moving to take the blade.

"So I'll teach you, Brat. I gotta do something with myself seems I got myself stuck watching over your pathetic ass." The ghost grumbled, attempting to kick the boy in the shins. His foot went straight through.

"Gah! That's freakin' cold!" Naruto complained, jumping back. The spectre grinned.

"Do what you're told or I'll kick you in the nuts. Maybe they'll freeze off." Zabuza suggested with a malicious grin. Naruto winced and placed his hands protectively over his crotch. The man raised a non-existent eyebrow, and pointed to the blade still sticking out of the ground.

"Okay okay, I get it." The boy muttered.

Naruto dashed over to the grave, took a deep breath and wrapped his hands around the hilt of the massive sword. He looked around quickly, to make sure no one was going to accuse him of grave-robbing. Seeing no one, Naruto hefted the huge blade, and dragged it out of the ground. Once free of the earth, the weight of the blade versus the boy's diminutive build resulted in Naruto sprawled ungracefully on the ground, being squashed by Kubikiri Honchou. Zabuza face-palmed.

"Brat, you are pathetic." He growled. Naruto scowled at the ghost.

"Not all of us are giants like you, you know." He argued. Zabuza waved one hand dismissively, as Naruto dragged himself out from under the blade.

The blonde grumbled and pulled a sealing scroll out of his pocket. He opened the scroll and laid it on the ground next to the giant sword. Deciding that he didn't want to store the dirt on the weapon as well, the boy removed his orange jacket and used it to wipe down the blade, much to the spectre's relief.

"Haven't got any oil, do you?" Zabuza grumbled. Naruto shook his head.

"Well that's the first thing you're doing when we get back to your village. A good sword only stays good with proper care." The ghost nodded, folding his arms across his broad chest. The boy rolled his eyes and carefully as possible moved the giant sword into the scroll, sealing it away. Once the sword in the scroll was safely tucked away in his pocket, Naruto turned to his new ghostly companion.

"So now what, Ghost-sensei?" Naruto inquired looking eagerly towards the apparition.

"Don't call me that, Brat. It's Zabuza. Za-bu-za. Got it?" The ghost clarified poking and arm right through Naruto on each syllable of his name.

"Gah! Don't do that!" The boy whined, rubbing absently on his cold feeling chest. The ghost snorted, and looked away.

"Dobe, why are you talking to yourself?" Sasuke walked into the clearing, trying to look his normal aloof self while limping and having Sakura trying to force a blanket onto him. Zabuza started sniggering at the Uchiha's attempts to be tough and stoic, while Naruto looked to the apparition and his team mate and back.

"I make better company than you Teme." The blonde shot back, realising no one else could see the nuke-nin.

"Don't be rude to Sasuke-kun." Sakura admonished. "He's hurt."

"But Sakura-chan, I was hurt too, and you're not looking after me." Naruto whined to the pink haired girl.

"Well you couldn't have been hurt that bad. You're fine now." The girl argued.

"Yeah, how do you do that? You haven't even got a scratch from those needles." Sasuke asked suspiciously.

"That's true. I didn't notice till he pointed it out. Maybe it's a bloodline." Ghost Zabuza mused, walking around Naruto eyeing his skin thoughtfully.

"I don't know. Maybe it's one of those bloodline things." Naruto quickly answered. He really didn't need them knowing it was actually the fox.

"How can you not know?" Sakura scoffed. Sasuke looked thoughtful.

"Well there aren't exactly any other Uzumaki's around to tell me, now are there?" Naruto sulked; offended that his team mates couldn't even notice that he had no family.

"Just because Sasuke-kun has activated his bloodline doesn't mean that you should start claiming to have one too. We know you're jealous, but making up bloodlines isn't going to help." The girl lectured. Zabuza decided to amuse himself by doing humorous impressions of Naruto's team mate, seeing as being a ghost he couldn't smack the kunoichi over the head.

"I'm not jealous of Sasuke-teme." The blonde growled, trying his best to ignore the apparition.

"Whatever Dobe. Kakashi said you have to guard Tazuna today seems you're up and about." The brunette cut through the impending argument.

Naruto sighed and stomped off towards the bridge and away from his team mates, all the while muttering about glory-hog Uchiha's and ignorant fan girls.

"So, is it really a bloodline?" Zabuza pestered, catching up with the stomping teen.

"No. I have a demon fox sealed in me. He heals all my injuries in, like, a few minutes or so." Naruto admitted grumpily.

"So you're a jinchuuriki, huh? That explains the foul chakra on the bridge." Mused the ghost, "Besides crazy healing, you got any other special abilities?"

"I guess. Why?"

"Well if I'm stuck training you, you might as well tell me these sorts of things so I know what I can teach you, and what you already know." Zabuza explained, moving to smack the blonde upside the head.

"Argh! You're gonna give me brain freeze!" Naruto cried.

"Then stop being such a knucklehead, and I won't have to." He replied shortly.

"Well, aside from healing I have some heightened senses like hearing and smell, and absolute shit loads of chakra, but that's all I know of." The boy replied. "Do all jinchuuriki get special abilities?"

"Well the chakra thing isn't surprising. All the jinchuuriki I've heard about have weird abilities. Maybe you just haven't found all yours yet." The ghost mist ninja said thoughtfully. Naruto hummed in agreement, but said no more as he approached the bridge. He didn't want everyone thinking he was crazy, talking to someone only he could see.


	2. Chapter 2

**More Caffeine & sugar induced sillyness for you. Don't worry, I get worse with alcohol... **

**P.S. Merry Christmas to you all!**

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CHAPTER 2

The trip back to Konoha would have been boring for Naruto if the ghost of Zabuza hadn't decided to ask questions the whole way. Ignoring the spectre didn't work, as the boy would just receive a ghostly limb through his body, chilling him to the bone. Eventually he had to rely on simple sign language, so that his team mates wouldn't think he'd gone insane; or any more insane than they already thought him to be. For the past hour, Naruto had been walking along in the middle of the group, signing his life story. Why Zabuza had wanted to know that was beyond him, but he did it anyway, if only to have someone to talk to who couldn't go and retell everything to someone else who would use the information against him.

"I didn't know you knew sign-language Naruto." Kakashi spoke up from behind the orange-clad genin. Naruto froze mid-step and nearly tripped face first into the road.

"Ah, yeah. This deaf old lady used to live next door when I first moved into my apartment. She taught me." The boy quickly answered, hoping his teacher hadn't been reading his hands the whole time.

"Hm. It's a useful skill for a shinobi to have." The man responded, still with his eye in his book. "Especially for co-ordinating with your team without alerting the enemy to your presence. Very stealthy." Naruto perked up at the round-about praise.

"Yeah, because Naruto can be ssooo stealthy in bright orange." He wilted again as it seemed Sakura had been listening in from the front of the group with the Uchiha. "It just makes you a walking target you know."

"And bright red, with pink hair is just so much better." Ghost Zabuza looked at the girl sceptically. The blonde boy kept his comments to himself for once. Kakashi frowned to himself but said no more. Internally he was wondering how no one realised that the reason Naruto had created his infamous 'Sexy Jutsu' was to gain employment in the red light district. Images of naked Naruto dancing as his female alter-ego did, swarmed the Copy-nin's brain, so he terminated that line of thought before he lost his composure.

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Team seven was little more than three miles outside of Konoha when Kakashi couldn't withhold his annoyance any longer. There was someone reading over his shoulder, he was sure of it. He'd slowly been drifting further and further back, unconsciously followed by Naruto, while the two other members of team seven continued at their previous pace.

"Maa, excuse me Hyuuga-san?" The jonin intercepted an outgoing Konoha team. "Would you be able to activate your Byakugan for a second please?" Not one to deny a request from the famous Sharingan Kakashi, the Hyuuga complied.

"It appears there is a spectral presence reading over your left shoulder, Hatake-san. It is connected to one of your genin." The man respectfully reported. Naruto spun around to look at where Zabuza had gone to.

"Thank you Hyuuga-san." The jonin nodded with an eye smile, and the Hyuuga and team continued on their mission.

"Pervert!" Naruto cried, pointing to the spectral nuke-nin. Said nuke-nin ignored the shout.

"Why yes I am." The jonin eye smiled. "So why are you being followed by the ghost of a fellow pervert?" Naruto gained a deer in headlights look.

"The Hyuuga can see ghosts?" The blonde exclaimed, completely off topic.

"Yes they can. Now care to tell me about your invisible friend?" Kakashi reminded his student.

"Haku told Zabuza to haunt me or something like that." Naruto answered dismissively, absently wondering whether the sexy-jutsu would work on the perverted spook, and if so, how a ghost would get a nose-bleed without blood.

Suddenly, Naruto started running around in circles, shouting about getting brain freeze. His jonin sensei was confused.

"Haku asked me to come back and help you, you brat! You should be grateful for my assistance to 'fulfil your dream', or whatever crap you and Haku go on about. And it's your fault anyway for making me feel again; otherwise I could be happily in Hell laughing my ass off at Gatou right now, not here putting up with a brain damaged jinchuuriki!" Ghost Zabuza ranted, chasing after the orange clad genin, doing his best to whack the boy in the head. Needless to say, as a ghost, his fists tended to go through the boys cranium, rather than actually making an impact.

Giving it up as a lost cause, Kakashi re-opened his book, gave a small perverted giggle and resumed walking, without the annoyance of someone reading over his shoulder.


	3. Chapter 3

**Powered by Ricky Martin.**

**(literally... I was listening to good old 90's Ricky martin while writing this.) **

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CHAPTER 3

Naruto was tired and grumpy. For the past week he'd been woken up at ungodly hours of the morning by his toes nearly falling off from frostbite; then being pushed through training exercise after exercise under threat of ball-freeze for two hours; putting up with Uptight and the Banshee through various missions and the like; another round of training under duress; then his second job where for some unknown reason Kakashi-sensei had taken to attending, but never tipped his performances; and on top of that, he couldn't even eat ramen without serious brain freeze. It was all just getting on his nerves.

"Come on, you've been getting more tips from work, so you can't say that you can't afford it." Zabuza complained gruffly, arms crossed across his chest.

'No.' the blonde boy sitting next to the spectral entity signed. 'Shopkeepers over-charge me for everything, remember?'

"Yes, but you could just use your dancing form. Say you're buying for a little brother or something. I bet that old lard-ball would give you a discount if you went to his shop as a girl." The ghost smirked. He had observed and enjoyed Naruto's second job, exotic dancing in his Sexy-jutsu form, more than once. It was a great place for information gathering really. He had so much blackmail material the blonde could use, as soon as the boy stopped being so noble at any rate.

'I'm not getting rid of the orange.' Naruto silently replied, a petulant expression on his face. Zabuza growled in annoyance at the boy's stubbornness, and wondered why again it was that he agreed to haunt the brat.

Kakashi chose that moment to appear at the Team 7 meeting spot, and immediately began giving orders for team training. The silver-haired male briefly glanced at the blonde boy, sighed a bit, and turned away.

"Huh?" Naruto actually said out loud, forgoing the sign language in his confusion. "What as that about?"

"Kami this kid's oblivious." The dead shinobi muttered incredulously.

"Huh?" The blonde repeated. Zabuza rolled his eyes and rushed his haunt.

"Go get new clothes now! You will get what I choose for you and you will damn well wear it. Right now, you hear me!" He cried, running repeatedly through the boy.

"Gah! Okay, okay! I'm going, I'm going!" Naruto shouted, trying to run away from the horrible cold feeling of being run through by the irate ghost.

Kakashi and the remaining members of team 7 watched the spectacle with varying degrees of confusion.

"What was that about Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked warily, watching her orange-clad team mate disappear into the distance.

"Ghost problems." The man eye smiled and created a shadow clone to follow his errant student.

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"No, it looks similar to the Bastard's shirt."Naruto in female form complained, as his ghostly companion pointed out clothing that he approved of. Suddenly the boy-in-disguise's eyes alighted on a burnt orange vest. It was slightly lighter built than the chunin vests but still of the same style, except where there should be a zipper at the front, there were dark blue ties that would result in the vest permanently revealing the centre of the wearer's chest and abs. Immediately hearts appeared in the boy's eyes.

'What is with the brat and weird-ass orange clothes?' Zabuza thought to himself.

"Fine," The ghost conceded. "But I'll be choosing the rest of your stuff." Too enamoured with the vest, Naruto distractedly agreed and picked up the items the ghost pointed to.

Back in his apartment and natural form, Naruto stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom, examining his reflection. Besides the recently dubbed 'Vest of Awesome', the boy's new wardrobe included black/gray camouflage pants, midnight blue leg warmers and wraps for his hands and face. The apparition argued that the whisker marks made him look like a kitten, which wasn't bad-ass. Naruto had to admit, his new outfit was pretty cool, even if he didn't like the feeling of wearing the wraps around his face, Zabuza style. It was kind of hot and hard to breathe at first.

"Had some inspiration from beyond the grave I see." Kakashi commented, suddenly appearing behind the boy, making him jump in surprise.

"Ah, yeah," Naruto agreed, scratching the back of his head, as his neck was now covered. "Ne sensei, what are you doing in my bathroom?"

"Oh, well you see I was just checking that the water-"The man's bizarre excuse was cut off as Zabuza walked through the man. Naruto watched as the ghost nin didn't reappear on the other side, and his sensei randomly walked into a wall.

"What?" Zabuza's gruff voice came from Kakashi's mouth, as the man tried to walk through the wall again. Getting weirded out the blonde threw his toothbrush from the bathroom counter at the man, who 'poofed' out of existence.

"Hehehehe you just made Kakashi-sensei try to walk through the wall!" Naruto laughed. The ghost nin just looked thoughtful. Unfortunately for the boy, he was too busy laughing to realise that a thoughtful Zabuza only meant trouble.

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_With Team 7:_

"Hmm. Naruto's new clothes look good." Kakashi mused. "I wonder why my clone decided to try to walk through the wall though."

Sasuke and Sakura looked up from their chakra control exercises with slightly disturbed expressions.

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_Back with Naruto:_

"Give me a clone." The man demanded.

"Alright, but no funny stuff." The short blonde stipulated. "No being a pervert or making me look like a dork like you did with sensei's clone." The apparition just nodded impatiently, waving a hand in a 'hurry it up' motion. Naruto placed his hands in a crossed position, and created three clones.

"You still need to work on your chakra control brat." Zabuza commented, walking directly into one. Slowly the clone started doing some stretches and experimental movements, building up to a funny looking monkey dance.

"Oi! I said no funny stuff!" Shouted Naruto, punching the possessed, dancing clone.

"Alright, alright." Grumbled the ghost, jumping into the next clone in line. "Now how do I get out of this thing?" After a few attempts Zabuza managed to pull himself out of the clone, which dispersed straight after. He took possession of the third and final clone.

"Get back to your team kid." The possessed clone ordered, crossing its arms in a very Zabuza-like fashion.

"Alright. Remember, no funny stuff." Naruto reminded, before dashing off to join his team for their afternoon mission. Left alone, a predatory smirk came to the borrowed face of Zabuza.

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"It's better, but it's still orange. Sasuke-kun's dark blue is a much better ninja colour." The young kunoichi commented on her blonde team mate's new attire.

"Yeah, well you have pink hair." Was the slightly lame, come-back. He was too distracted to even comment on the Uchiha heir wearing a lot of white, as well as the blue. The boy's two team mates just stared, noticing the lack of exuberant retaliatory attack.

"Something worrying you, Naruto?" Kakashi visibly looked up from his book, scrutinising his youngest student. It didn't matter that the man had been peeking over his book at the boy every few minutes since he'd re-joined the group.

"Zabuza's got one of my clones, and I'm worried about what he's going to do with it." Naruto admitted. Sasuke and Sakura looked confused at the mention of the deceased ex-kiri nin.

"He can possess shadow clones huh?" The jonin mused, his genius brain putting the situation together. "Well that explains the clone I sent to check up on you trying to walk through a wall."

"Hahahaha! Yeah, that was funny seeing you with a confused, dumb expression running into the wall over and over." The blonde laughed. "Wait! How did you know about that? You weren't in my apartment, your clone was."

"Shadow clones return their memories to the original when they're dispersed." Kakashi eye-smiled.

"Argh! How did I not notice?" The masked boy cried, lightly pulling on his hair. "When was someone going to tell me this?" The jonin simply continued eye smiling at the boy. With his arms over his head like that, the vest showed off more of the boy's torso and the man was enjoying the view. He wondered how Naruto would look doing the pole dance routine from the previous night, in his original form and had to withhold a perverted giggle.

"Maa Maa Naruto, it doesn't matter. Now you know." Kakashi answered when his eye candy was taken away by Naruto lowering his arms in defeat.

"But it does matter, Kakashi-sensei! Think of all the extra training I could have had my clones doing." The boy whined, clinging onto the jonin's sleeve.

"Well, there are things that you can't train with Shadow clones, and if you use too many you can hurt yourself. I'll explain it to you after the mission, if you like." Kakashi invited, to which the blonde nodded ecstatically; it would almost be like getting private training from his jonin sensei.

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**Enter alterior motives. Next time, what Zabuza's been up to.**


	4. To My Valued Readers

To My Valued Readers,

I have completely misplaced my muse for this story, thus I am putting it up for adoption so that I may concentrate on my other works that I feel much more strongly for. I apologise to those who enjoyed this story, and added it to their favourites list, and I hope they will follow it to its new Author, or maybe pick up the mantle themselves, and continue to give this story life.

If you would like to adopt this story, feel free to message me and I shall send you this story.

Thank you,

Vengence-Angel2010


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